#FINTECH20IRELAND is the perfect platform for FinTech businesses, Tim Murphy, Strencom

By @SimonCocking great interview with Tim Murphy, who will be speaking at our event on the Tips for startups panel. To attend the event itself October 26th, at Moores Auditorium, UCD book tickets here. 

One min pitch for what you are doing now?

Strencom delivers secure, managed cloud and connectivity solutions that are the right fit for a customer’s business and their future strategy. To achieve this goal for the customer, we custom design the cloud infrastructure and connectivity solution, and project manage the implementation end-to-end, delivering on time and within budget. Our ethos is “We won’t let you down.”

How was the last year, what worked well, what didn’t move as quickly as you would have liked?

We are on a strong upward path at the moment and last year was another good year with steady business growth. I’m particularly pleased with the increase in our international business, which now represents a substantial 22% of our overall revenue. We made a number of infrastructure and capital investments throughout the business in the last five years. These were mainly in technology, with a focus on our cloud infrastructure and data centres. Over the past 12 months, the investments are really starting to pay off and I can see the benefits in the business, with greater reliability and uptime, and increased profitability.

In the last year, we launched a number of new services that have had the effect of reducing customers’ costs. These include – SD-WAN services, which converge cloud and connectivity, therefore simplifying the network and management. We launched new faster Cloud storage on SSD and implemented Cisco UCS in our cloud network, significantly increasing compute speeds at the same or lower costs to our customers.

Our high staff retention level is something I’m very proud of. We have a good, experienced team that provides our clients with excellent customer service. One of the challenges of growing the business is finding the right people for the right seats, with experience in the technical and business development areas. We have some great opportunities open at present in these and other areas, in both Dublin and Cork.

Currently, we are looking for a suitable acquisition to support our growth plans. We’re looking at a number of companies both in Ireland and abroad.

One of the positive initiatives we have introduced involves measuring our customer satisfaction, using documented customer feedback known as NPS. It’s encouraging to see that we have the highest customer satisfaction rating in our area at 73; to compare that to Apple who have an NPS of 89.All of our competitors are down at 30, so all in all we are very happy with 73, and continue to work towards improving this.

What are your plans for the future?

We have ambitious growth plans for the future. I want to double the revenue of the company in the next three years, with a longer term plan to grow the annual revenue level to €100m. This plan includes recruiting new employees and completing our acquisition target. Currently the business is involved in discussions with two potential target companies, one in Ireland and one outside of Ireland.

Why are you sponsoring this event?

Ireland is, and has for a long time been, a hub for the pharma and internet sectors, and it is also fast emerging as a global hub for the fintech sector. Besides the big name multinational fintech companies that have offices here, there is a huge amount of Irish innovation in the fintech sector. A lot of our customers are home-grown fintech companies so the Irish Tech News Fintech event is the perfect platform to support these companies.

What inspired you to attend it?

We’re interested in meeting people in the fintech space. We want to hear their stories, find out about their businesses and look at ways that we can add value to what they do. Going to the event alone is inspiring in itself.

 Which influencers and websites do you follow to keep up to date with the latest developments?

There are a few websites that I check sporadically through the day. I keep an eye on Irish Tech News to keep up-to-date on local and international technology news. I also use LinkedIn quite a bit.

How can people find out more about what you are working on?

Come and visit us at our stand at the fintech event or visit www.strencom.net.

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie or on Twitter: @SimonCocking